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The Giving Garden® Podcast Season 2 Episode 2 with Erin Hysom
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Full transcript of Season 2 Episode 2
Martina Halloran: Coming up on this episode of The Giving Garden® podcast.
Erin Hysom: Schools are these environments where we're setting children up for future successes, and they cannot reach their full future potential if they're hungry and they're food insecure and they're malnourished. School meals help to nourish a child, to improve their health outcomes, to improve their academic outcomes, and to set them up on this road towards a brighter future. Policymakers need to understand that preschool meals is an investment. It's an investment into a child's day and their future. It's an investment in the individual child, the school, and the larger community.
Martina Halloran: Welcome to The Giving Garden® podcast where we explore how small acts of giving can blossom into lasting change. I'm your host, Martina Halloran, founder of The Giving Garden® and CEO of Dr. Hauschka Skin Care USA. In each episode, we highlight the power of giving, whether it's time, kindness, or resources, and how these acts can transform both lives and whole communities. Join me as we explore the ripple effect of giving and its lasting impact.
This episode of the Giving Garden podcast is sponsored by Dr. Hauschka Skin Care. From now until March 5, use code meals, that's M E A L S and receive 20% off your Dr. Hauschka product order. Visit drhauschka.com to learn more.
Today's conversation is one that sits at the heart of care, dignity, and opportunity, especially for our children. Across the country, millions of students rely on school meals as a consistent source of nourishment. For many families, these meals are not supplemental. They are essential. Free school meal programs help ensure children can focus, learn, and grow without the weight of hunger shaping their day.
Our guest today brings both deep expertise and lived experience in this work. We are joined by Erin Hysom, Senior Child Nutrition Policy Analyst at the Food Research and Action Center, one of the nation's leading organizations working to end hunger through research, advocacy, and policy change. Erin has spent more than fifteen years working across child nutrition from direct service to system levels policy. Before joining FRAC, she worked as a registered dietitian with the WIC program and later helped oversee and expand school meal programs in a large school district, where she saw firsthand how access to nutritious meals shapes a child's ability to learn and thrive. This episode explores why free school meals matter so deeply.
What's at stake for children, families, and communities if access to nutrition is weakened, and what it looks like when policy is rooted in dignity and care. This is not just a conversation about policy. It's about people, about children arriving at school ready to learn, about families navigating impossible choices, and about our collective responsibility to ensure nourishment is treated as a right, not a privilege. Erin, welcome to The Giving Garden® podcast.
Erin Hysom: Hi, Martina. Thank you so much for having me and covering such an important topic. Wow.
Martina Halloran: It is certainly our pleasure. You have done such incredible work, and the topic is so vast. So, Erin, for our listeners who might be new to this work or may not understand what this all means, because we see a lot of it, especially right now in the news. Can you explain why free school meals are such a critical foundation for children's health, learning, and ultimately dignity?
Erin Hysom: Oh, of course. Imagine you're a child, right? You're sitting in your classroom and your teacher's at the front of the room, in front of the chalkboard, or I guess they have white boards now. They didn't have those back when I was in school. And you're trying so hard.
You're trying so hard to sit still and to concentrate and to focus on the lesson at hand. But you have not eaten and it's more than just a growling stomach, right? Food insecurity, there's a lethargy to it. Know children who are food insecure and chronically hungry, they have difficulty focusing, behaving in the classrooms. Right?
There's a preoccupation and a constant worry around food, almost a food anxiety. It takes center stage in your mind. You know school meals are foundational to student success. They are just as important, and I would argue possibly more, than textbooks and transportation because we know from decades of research, children cannot learn on an empty stomach. Children will not reach their full potential if they are hungry, if they are food insecure, if they are undernourished, if they are stressed around food.
And the chronic stress that food insecurity causes and brings on a child is going to hinder not only their academic achievement, not only their ability to pass a test on Friday or to get a good grade at the end of the semester, but lifelong learning, lifelong health and well-being. Schools are these environments where we're setting children up for future successes and they cannot reach their full future potential if they're hungry and they're food insecure and they're malnourished. And so school meals are such a vital public health investment. One of the most important investments that we can make in this country to set our children up for this success. To set them up for long, healthy life.
That hit me hard and it hit me deep. And I think it's hard for people to connect the dots. I came from a food insecure household and was a recipient of free school lunch more than forty years ago when it was a different dynamic and it was not really understood and people did it, communities did it, school districts did it, but they did it in a
Martina Halloran: way that created stigma and really created space for people to not access programs. And if we're really talking about future outcomes, right? I think that's what's really important here is that people are understanding it's not just that single moment in time. It's what are the future outcomes? What are the foundational building blocks that organizations are trying to work towards through policy to really have the best outcomes for children, which is ultimately the best outcomes for society when you look at it in a holistic view.
So you work closely on programs like the community eligibility provision. I'm sure many people listening don't know what that is. Can you walk us through what CEP is and why it has been
Erin Hysom: such a powerful tool for expanding access to fresh, free school meals? Sure. CEP is a game changer for school meals. The community eligibility provision is an option that high poverty schools can use where they can offer all of their students free school meals regardless of that individual household circumstance or the individual household income. In CEP schools, all children have access to nutritious school breakfast and nutritious school lunch at no charge.
It reduces the stigma that we create when we categorize children by their household income. You know, the traditional school meal program looks at individual household income and says, all right, well you are eligible for a free meal and you are eligible for a reduced price meal and you need to pay full price for your meal. And this creates an almost social hierarchy in the lunch line. And you know this, children are very perceptive. And when you think back on our own childhood, my goodness, how important our peers were and what our peers thought of us.
And especially as we start to reach adolescents, maybe middle school ages and secondary schools, high school age teenagers, that peer influence, the peer perception of us is so important to our own internal mental health and well-being. We never want to be perceived as different or other or not like our friends. And children from a very young age start to identify differences. And so when we categorize children by their household income, we're really adding to this stigma in the lunch line that oftentimes prevents children, even children who are eligible for free or reduced price meals from participating. And we see this so clearly when a school adopts the community eligibility provision or when a state passes a healthy school meals for all policy, that stigma is reduced.
Right? Everyone kind of has this like equitable playing field. It raises the nutrition equity within a school system so that participation increases. We see significant increases in school breakfast participation and school lunch participation at all income levels. So children who were always eligible for free and reduced price meals didn't start participating until their friends also got free school meals.
The community eligibility provision, it's a pathway towards our ultimate goal, which is healthy school meals for all, where every student in every state, regardless of household income, has access to the nutrition that they need to succeed throughout the school day. You mentioned earlier, we all benefit from a nourished society. The entire school benefits from a well nourished, full, ready to go enrollment. The teachers report better classroom behavior. Nurses report less visits to the nurse's office, when schools employ robust breakfast programs, right, when they really make breakfast part of their school day and they say, come on in, come to school, put your book bag away, sit down for morning announcements, and let's have breakfast together and community with our friends and our teachers in our classroom, everyone together.
When they do that, we see improvements in school attendance, which as we know chronic absenteeism is a significant issue facing school districts today. Intendance improves, behavior improves, test scores improve. When we provide strong school meal programs that are equitable to all children at no cost to all children, What we're saying to the student is we care. We care about you. We understand you're not just here to study math.
You're not just here to learn history. You are here as a whole person and a whole child. And we are going
Martina Halloran: to nourish the whole child and support you on your journey towards adulthood. What you're talking about is community. But what does that really mean? It's the schools that your children attend. It's the parks that you go to.
It's the activities that you participate in. And to give children this idea out of the gate of community and this idea of care, food is the center of so many cultural experiences. So many key events in the human experience is grounded in food. And I think you said something really critical that CEP helps remove stigma. I was listening to you and taking like a step back in time.
And a lot of people don't realize that when school free lunch was first started in many school districts, you had a different color ticket. So everybody knew. So you would try and like hide it or roll it up in your pocket or just say, I'm not gonna get lunch that day because the peep there's too many people in line Because nutrition is really about community and it's not about who can provide it for themselves versus who can't. I love the idea that the approach is, let's have breakfast together. Let's have a meal together.
Let's talk about our community as a whole and making nutrition part of that whole community experience is really powerful. And I think as a little person sitting in a room, I think you nailed it. They're looking up saying, these people care about me. I heard many years ago that your child's first experience in school is exactly how their experience will be up until they graduate high school. And I thought about that when I had my son and I was like, I hope I get the right kindergarten teacher.
I hope it's the right environment because that love of learning can easily be distinguished for children. Right? And it can just either flourish or peter out for some kids in this idea of if somebody is so worried about what they're gonna eat for the day, that love of learning is easily missed. They have no opportunity to find that love of learning like their peers do. So I think that's incredible.
This idea of community eligibility for all levels the playing field and creates this idea of equity. We hear often in the news that we should only be giving access to people who truly need it. But I think we're not sometimes looking at the whole lens of what does that do to a community? How does that fracture a community? It's the same thing with housing, housing inequity, or access to healthcare.
If a community isn't holistically able to access healthcare and housing, then how does a community flourish? From my view, when I think about school free lunches, there's some very big similarities in what communities are doing to help provide access to different services.
Erin Hysom: You know, as you're talking, it's bringing up so many thoughts. And first of all, the idea that a child's first experience in the school system is their experience throughout their school system. Thank you, kindergarten teachers. No pressure out there for all the kindergarten teachers. Bless you.
You're doing great job. And I think what you say about, you know, this that only certain students would benefit from school meals and how erroneous that thought actually is because what we know, the research shows us, is that school meals are the healthiest meals that children receive in a given day for all children regardless of income level. School meals, I like to say the lunch tray is like a living textbook. It teaches children, all children, the components of a healthy meal, how to put together a meal, not just that in that cafeteria, but when they go home and they start making their own dinners or when they get to be adults or teenagers and older and they start preparing their own food, they're thinking, do I have a protein source? Do I have a grain source?
Do I have a colorful fruit and vegetable? Am I having dairy? And they're learning all of these components about their local agriculture system, the farmers that are in their communities that are supplying products to their lunch tribe. When you talk about breakfast, I think about my own children. I have two young children.
They're currently in kindergarten and first grade. And as you can imagine, mornings are chaotic. They are chaotic. And my children, like most parents will say, I guess, of more than one children, are they're as similar as night and day. And my son in particular has been one of these children who ever since he started eating solid foods at around one years old, he's not hungry right away.
He wakes up and he has a glass of milk and that's like his go to. And then it takes a few hours for him to like get an appetite. And when he was in kindergarten last year and my daughter was in pre preschool and those mornings were very chaotic because my daughter would go one way to one school and my son would go another way to another school, we would get him up. And as a dietitian, was like, he's gotta be nourished. He's gotta eat a healthy breakfast.
He's gotta get through this school day. And it was the first week of school and we're running out the door and he didn't eat his he didn't even touch his breakfast. And I started to panic. And I said, what are you gonna do? You're not gonna make it to lunch.
You're gonna you're gonna be too hungry. You're not gonna behave in your classroom. You're gonna get wild. And he said, mom, I have breakfast in my classroom. His school does breakfast in his classroom.
And for my child, it's not maybe not an economic need, but it's a physiological need. Right? Exactly. Wakes up at 06:30. His appetite doesn't kick in till about nine.
Well, that's when his school day starts. So he's able to get the nutrition he needs when he We needs love to
Martina Halloran: say at Dr. Hauschka, we meet people where they're at. And it's the same thing. I think when you talk about needs and access, everybody has a different need at a different time. And if you create that network or that space like schools can do to be able to nourish your child at 9AM because at 6AM, he's they're not hungry.
And I think that is a really fantastic thing that at any school, ideally, that a child would be able to go to their first period and have a really healthy nutritious lunch, especially if they just simply weren't hungry before they left the house. But if you think think about it, breakfast to lunch for a little person is a long time. We talk about education a lot because we're talking about free school meals and people often think it's an education issue, but it's also a public health issue. Can you share a little bit about how nutrition access impacts long term outcomes for children? Absolutely.
Erin Hysom: I mean, I'm a dietitian. I also have my master's in public health, so this is right up my alley. I believe school meals are one of the strongest public health investments that we can make in this country. And as we mentioned earlier, it's an investment for today and an investment for the future. And we know from decades and decades of research that food insecurity, chronic hunger is detrimental to growth and development, to learning and achievement.
Right? When you are growing up in a food insecure household, you are more likely to have chronic diseases. And there's this whole cycle, right, this cycle of poverty that can continue. But school meals have the potential to break that cycle because school meals help to nourish a child, to improve their health outcomes, to improve their academic outcomes, and to set them up on this road towards a brighter future. We know, as I mentioned earlier, research shows us school meals are the healthiest meals that children receive in a given day.
Right? There's a variety of fruits and vegetables. There's a bunch of different colors. I mean, my own children come home from school and say, oh, I tried this different kind of yellow watermelon or oh, I tried this other kind of purple carrot at school today or oh, mom, did you know that they grow these purple potatoes in our county? So it's more than the nourishment.
It's an education piece. It's an academic piece. It's a health piece. It really provides a holistic support for
Martina Halloran: the child. I love that. It's a holistic support. Often people try to put these issues into silos, but it's so connected. It's not a one lane kind of conversation.
And that takes me to the next part of the conversation, SNAP. SNAP and school meals are deeply connected. And there's been so much lately, particularly in the news about SNAP and SNAP benefits and what's happening. Can you explain how eligibility for CEP is tied to SNAP participation and why cuts to SNAP could put free school meals at risk?
Erin Hysom: The cuts to SNAP that were passed in the budget reconciliation law back in July, HR one, are devastating, and they are going to be devastating to individuals and households and communities across the country. There's this idea that food insecurity or hunger, it only exists in this type of neighborhood or that type of neighborhood or this type of household. And the truth is that hunger and food insecurity is in every community across the nation. Every community. There is disparities in the rates of food insecurity, but there is food insecurity across the nation.
And the cuts to SNAP are going to worsen hunger in homes and worsen hunger in classrooms because of that connection that you mentioned. SNAP and school meals are closely linked and for very, very good reasons. When a child participates in SNAP or when the child's household participates in SNAP, they are automatically eligible for free school meals without having to submit a cumbersome meal benefit application. Right? There's a lot of barriers to the school meal application, barriers to the family, and barriers for the school system itself.
You know, language and literacy barriers. Confusing documents. If you haven't looked at one in a while, I would recommend you take a look and see all the different nuances, pieces of income that is being requested in a school meal application. And then there's shame and stigma associated with just submitting that application itself. You know, you live in a close knit community and maybe the person that is processing that application is your neighbor or your son's football coach or and you don't want them to know much money you make or don't make.
So you might say, you know what, we're not gonna apply for that because I don't need Mr. Neighbor down the street to know how much money I make. So the meal application is a lot of barriers. So when we directly link children on SNAP to free school meals, we are breaking down those barriers and we are helping to support access for eligible children. It also streamlines the administration of school nutrition departments.
So we hear a lot about efficiencies. This process where we call it's called direct certification where we directly certify children in SNAP households for free school meals. It increases administrative and operational efficiencies for the school nutrition department. And what that means in just kind of layman's terms is that it reduces paperwork burdens. So rather than having to collect and process and verify paperwork, school districts can utilize data and technology and leverage existing data sources to already determine eligibility.
So it gives school nutrition departments time, right? Time is so valuable. It gives them time to go meet with a farmer and bring in that local broccoli into the lunch line or to meet with a student health committee and say, what foods do you want to see on the menu? What is culturally reflective of our student body? It gives nutrition departments time to train staff to maybe buy different kind of culinary equipment, to do a little more scratch cooking.
And so when we move away from the paperwork and we actually utilize the technology that's available to us, we create these efficient systems. And the best result of that is that the child has access to the meal that he or she needs during the school day. And then as you can see, there's this ripple effect of multiple benefits. So what's very alarming and concerning right now is that these cuts to SNAP, they are going to be devastating to homes. Individuals, families, households, food resources are going to plummet, and they're not gonna have the ability to make up those differences.
And it's gonna increase hunger in the classroom because it's gonna sever that link. Cutting snap. When a child loses snap, they're going to lose that direct link to free school meals. And ultimately, some children will fall through the cracks and they'll start to increase hunger during the school day. It also is going to make it more challenging for schools to implement the community eligibility provision.
So we talked about CEP earlier and how beneficial it is in offering free school meals to all students as SNAP enrollment and rosters decrease, as children lose access to SNAP, it's going to get much more challenging for a school to implement CEP, and that's going to have another negative ripple effect throughout the school community.
Martina Halloran: It feels like there's been a step backwards with SNAP. But then there's been this also at the same time, this incredible momentum for healthy school meals for all at the state level. That has been a conversation that keeps happening, keeps happening, and it's almost like a rally cry, if you will. How does CEP fit into that larger movement? And while we talked about some things that are really challenging, what progress within this movement gives you a little bit of hope?
Erin Hysom: I have a lot of hope right now. I maintain that hope, particularly around school meals. Because, as you mentioned, the momentum behind healthy school meals for all is growing and growing and growing. You know, we experienced what it was like as a nation to offer all children free school meals during the pandemic. During the pandemic, USDA released waivers and all schools were allowed to serve all children free school meals.
And it really served as a test run for a national healthy school meals for all policy. And it really showed us what was possible and the power and the possibility when we invest in our children's health nutrition and we invest in their futures and we invest in the community and the community's health and nutrition. So there's a lot of this momentum behind Healthy School Meals for All because once a community experiences the benefits of free school meals, they do not want to give those benefits up. They don't want to go back. No one in the community really wants to go back.
Right? It benefits all parents. It's a time saver. Right? It's a kickback for households in their taxes, right?
It's like almost like an investment they're paying themselves back because they're getting free breakfast and lunch. So CEP is a step towards healthy school meals for all. Community eligibility within a school district or an individual school is healthy school meals for all. The challenge is not every school is eligible to participate in CEP. So state policies like Healthy School Meals for All almost cover that gap and they make it possible that every school in the state is able to reap these benefits of free school meals.
And what we're really looking to do is make this a nationwide policy. Make it so that every child in whichever state they may live in has access to the nourishment that they need to succeed throughout the school day. It's really that simple. You know, children are in school for hours and hours at a time. We need to make sure they have the nutrition to succeed in that classroom.
Martina Halloran: You said it seems so simple. It is simple. It's pretty basic. You nourish somebody physically. You're nourishing their mind.
Therefore, the outcomes continue to get better and better. But that takes us to policy. From a policy perspective, while it seems so simple and it seems from a human dignity perspective that we should be feeding our children, we should be nourishing our children as a community, as a society, as a country. But what do you think policymakers often misunderstand about free school meals and programs like CEP? Because there's obviously a disconnect.
Right? There's some type of disconnect where policymakers aren't fully understanding this powerful benefit of how we build a community in a really healthy way if we keep running into these barriers and these obstacles to getting these things done.
Erin Hysom: Policymakers need to understand that free school meals is an investment. This is an investment, not an expense. It's an investment into what we've been talking about all all day today. It's an investment into a child's day and their future. It's an investment in the individual child, the school, and the larger community.
Healthy school meals for all benefits the entire household, the entire school district, and it really ensures that all children, regardless of what may be going on in their individual home, are able to eat the foods that are right for their body so that they can thrive. And that's what we're looking for as a nation. Right? To have a healthy and happy thriving society. And we can't do that if we have hungry children.
We can't do that if we have parents who are, you know, foregoing their own meals to feed their kids. There's a level of chronic stress that exists within a food insecure household that has extreme detrimental impacts on health and well-being. We talk a lot about mental health today, and we even hear in the news that children, adolescents, teenagers are struggling with mental health issues. Right? We have school avoidance.
I mentioned chronic absenteeism earlier. Providing nourishing wholesome school meals, being a safe space for children can help to alleviate some of those stresses, can help to kinda take at least that stress of how am I gonna feed my child today off of that parent's back. And that has tremendous benefits in the child and the family's whole life and how they function. So school meals are really an investment and policymakers should be aware that we need to invest in these programs. We need to restore SNAP.
We need to restore SNAP. We need to invest in the community eligibility provision, and we need to move towards healthy school meals for all. Because if we don't, we are jeopardizing the future of 14,000,000 children across the country. 14,000,000 children in this country go to bed every night not knowing where their next meal may come from, are classified as food insecure, live in food insecure households where they lack food and resources. And if we fail to restore SNAP, if we fail to invest in CEP and healthy school meals for all, then we are failing those children.
Martina Halloran: And we're failing as a society. Because, you know, they often say you hear it everywhere, children are our future. And I don't say that lightly. When you think about a young child having levels of stress, that is not their responsibility to have. And that stress is coming from, I'm simply hungry and I don't know when I'm gonna eat again.
That says a lot about society. And that says a lot about where we're at. The incredible thing is that there are people like you and your colleagues and your coworkers really on the forefront. And you've worked in child nutrition, which I think is such a great connection because you're understanding. You know, when you think about policymakers, sometimes people are so disconnected from the issue, but you seem to be so connected from a direct service, not just from policy.
How has being so close to the day to day realities and some of your experiences shaped how you're approaching your policy work? I always see the children. I always see
Erin Hysom: their faces in my head, know, and I've had the privilege of having amazing professional career and experience. And I think that my colleagues at FRAC, at the Food Research and Action Center, would agree. They are just as passionate as I am in this work. I think about the mothers and the fathers and the parents and the babies that I would sit with in WIC clinics, they were crying, crying. A life event happened.
This was not their plan to raise their baby. This was not how they intended on raising their children and the humanity that's in front of you. Right? When you're just talking to people like you would talk to someone at the grocery store or your friends at a ballgame. And I think about the lunch lines and I think about the children that would come through the lunch line and they would load their trays up.
I worked in a school district and it was a large school district, one of the top 50 largest school districts in the nation, and we served thousands and thousands, tens and thousands of meals a day. And you would see children come through. We offered unlimited fruits and vegetables on the serving line so the child could get their entree and their beverage and an unlimited quantity of fruits and vegetables. And it was so fascinating to watch the children say, oh, what is this? I'm gonna try something new.
And then I think of all the children I would see that would load their trays up with things like clementines and on Fridays or before maybe a school holiday or a break and you could see the panic in their eyes, Right? You could see the worry. You could see them when they come in and say, can I have seconds? Right? Do you think I could take a little more?
And you know that child's going home to empty cupboards. You know they're going home to bare pantries and an empty refrigerator. And that shouldn't be that way. Not in The United States of America. Not in 2026.
There's no child should go hungry throughout the school day. No child should go hungry throughout any period of their life. And so that's what keeps us moving forward. Right? That's what keeps the hope inside of us is that we know that we're capable of creating a nation free from hunger.
We know that we have the solutions. We have the policy answers. Restoring SNAP, running robust SNAP programs, investing in school meals. These will solve hunger. This will move our country on the path towards brighter futures.
So we have the solution. We just need the political will. We need the investments into our federal nutrition programs to support families across the country.
Martina Halloran: I love that the language that you're using is investment. Often we talk about how does the receiver receive our message? And investment is language policymakers understand. Investment is language Wall Street understands. And when you think about children as our biggest and best resources, of course we wanna invest in them.
And so I think about parents, educators, and community members who are listening today and would like to make that next step of investment in their community and their children. What are some meaningful ways they might be able to support or help to try to protect access to free school meals in their own communities? What are
Erin Hysom: some of those grassroot things people might be able to accomplish independently? Advocacy occurs at every level, and it occurs in a variety of different formats. And it can be as simple as calling up your local principal and saying, do you serve breakfast in the classroom? Do you offer breakfast after the bell? Why not?
Let's let's work together to break down the barriers to increase children's access to this vital morning meal. Let's set students up for a successful school day. So it might be as simple as that. Or it can be all the way up to running robust campaigns and getting involved in healthy school meals for all campaigns. When you come to the FRAC website, Food Research and Action Center, frac.org, you can go to our Legislative Action Center and you can send an email directly to your member of Congress.
And it's pretty easy and simple. We've set it up for you. You just type in your name, your address, and you can shoot an email off to your elected officials and your federal representatives. And you can say, Snap matters. We need to invest in SNAP.
We need to restore what was stripped from SNAP in HR one. School meals matter. We need to invest in school meals in the community eligibility provision. And you need to contact your members of Congress and you need to tell them these nutrition programs are vitally important. These nutrition programs are what make us great and they are what make us healthy and we need to not just protect them, we need to strengthen them and expand them.
I would also encourage listeners who are really interested and passionate about Healthy School Meals for All like I am and like my colleagues are to check out our Healthy School Meals for All website and you can see the map across the country where you'll see the nine states that currently offer free school meals to all students and then you can see that the overwhelming majority of the remaining states are working towards Healthy School Meals for All. They've either formed coalitions of parents and educators and anti-hunger advocates and medical and health providers and students and they form coalitions or they've introduced bills and legislation or maybe they're working towards universal free breakfast or maybe they have a policy that supports schools ability to implement CEP. And so you can see, oh, what is happening in my state? And then reach out. We'd be happy to connect you with our contacts and our network in your local communities and in your states to see how you can get involved more.
But I would definitely contact your members of Congress, sign up for our FRAC listserv to stay on top of information, up to date on the news as it relates to hunger and food insecurity, and then get involved and become engaged. Speak out. Talk about how important these programs are, how healthy and nutritious school meals are, how vital SNAP is to communities and local grocers. Saying your peace and voicing your opinion matters so much. We can't stay silent in this issue of hunger.
Martina Halloran: Absolutely. I'm gonna ask you this question, but I probably might know the answer already. When you think about the future of child nutrition in this country, what does success look like to you? We've talked about so many things, but we kind of come back to the same topic. I would love for you to share like in your perfect world, what does success look like?
Erin Hysom: That no individual has to choose between their dignity and a hot meal. Right? Everybody has access to the nutritious food that they want and need to thrive. In relation to school meals, it means healthy school meals for all. It means a nationwide policy where every student has access to breakfast and lunch every school day, where breakfast is part of the school day.
Children don't need to arrive early. They don't need to be stigmatized by eating separate from their friends. Breakfast is a normal part of the school culture and lunch is free for everybody. Breakfast and lunch are free for everybody because school meals, they're just as important as textbooks and transportation, and children cannot learn on an empty stomach. So the future in this country looks like healthy school meals for all and everyone, individuals, families, children, and adults having access to the food that they need to thrive.
Wow. Erin, thank you so much. As we come to
Martina Halloran: the close of today's conversation, we're reminded that access to nourishment is about so much more than food. It's about dignity. It's about equity. And it's about creating the conditions for children to learn, grow, and thrive. We're deeply grateful to Erin for sharing her knowledge, her experience, and her unwavering commitment to ensuring that every child has access to free nourishing school meals.
Her work at Food Research and Action Center demonstrates what is possible when policy is rooted in care, and when we listen closely to the needs of families and communities. Programs like free school meals and the community eligibility provision remind us that when we remove barriers and stigma, we open doors. And when we protect programs like SNAP, we protect not only access to food, but the well-being of millions of children across this country. If today's conversation moved you, we encourage you to learn more, to stay informed, and to use your voice and supportive policies that ensure nourishment is treated as a right, not a privilege. Thank you for gathering with us today, for listening with intention, and for being part of a community that believes care has the power to change lives.
Erin Hysom: Thank you, Erin. Thank you so much. As we come to
Martina Halloran: the close of today's conversation, we're reminded that access to nourishment is about so much more than food. It's about dignity. It's about equity, and it's about creating the conditions for children to learn, grow, and thrive. We're deeply grateful to Erin for sharing her knowledge, her experience, and her unwavering commitment to ensuring that every child has access to free, nourishing school meals. Her work at the Food Research and Action Center demonstrates what is possible when policy is rooted in care and when we listen closely to the needs of families and communities.
Programs like free school meals and the community eligibility provision remind us that when we remove barriers and stigma, we open doors. And when we protect programs like SNAP, we protect not only access to food, but the well-being of millions of children across this country. If today's conversation moved you, we encourage you to learn more, to stay informed, and to use your voice in support of policies that ensure nourishment is treated as a right, not a privilege. Thank you for gathering with us today, for listening with intention, and for being part of a community that believes care has the power to change lives. Thank you for listening to The Giving Garden® podcast.
I hope you're leaving inspired because even the smallest act can spark positive change. If you've enjoyed today's episode, don't forget to like, subscribe, and share. The Giving Garden® Podcast is produced by Edwin Batista and edited by Steven West. A special thanks to Helen Polisi for her guidance and generosity. The Giving Garden® podcast is brought to you by Dr. Hauschka Skin Care USA, pioneers in natural skincare for over fifty years in home to The Giving Garden® loyalty program. Visit drhauschka.com to learn more.
